1. "The days sloughed past uncounted and uncalendared. Along the interstate in the distance long lines of charred and rusting cars. The raw rims of the wheels sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber, in blackened rings of wire. The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats."

   1. On the Beach by Neville Shute

   2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

   3. The Stand by Stephen King

   4. When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs

2. "Brother Francis visualised a Fallout as half-salamander, because, according to tradition, the thing was born in the Flame Deluge, and as half-incubus who despoiled virgins in their sleep, for, were not the monsters of the world still called 'children of the Fallout'?"

   1. Z for Zachariah by Robert C O'Brien

   2. Dune by Frank Herbert

   3. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr

   4. The White Plague by Frank Herbert

3. "Lily saw water black as oil soaking down the streets of London, and across the squares and parks, the river exploring the contours of the flood plain that had long been denied it."

   1. The Flood by Stephen Baxter

   2. The Drowned World by JG Ballard

   3. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

   4. Downriver by Iain Sinclair

4. "The corpses of other great cities are lying buried in deserts and obliterated by the jungles of Asia. Some of them fell so long ago that even their names have gone with them. But to those who lived there their dissolution can have seemed no more probable or possible than the necrosis of a great modem city seemed to me."

   1. The Postman by David Brin

   2. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

   3. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

   4. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

5. "The plague was forgotten, in this new fear which the black sun had spread; and, though the dead multiplied, and the streets of Ispahan, of Pekin, and of Delhi were strewed with pestilence-struck corpses, men passed on, gazing on the ominous sky, regardless of the death beneath their feet."

   1. The Time Machine by HG Wells

   2. After London by Richard Jefferies

   3. The Last Man by Mary Shelley

   4. Cities of the Red Night by William Burroughs

6. "He scans the horizon, using his one sunglassed eye: nothing. The sea is hot metal, the sky a bleached blue, except for the hole burnt in it by the sun. Everything is so empty. Water, sand, sky, trees, fragments of past time. Nobody to hear him."

   1. The Death of Grass by John Christopher

   2. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

   3. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

   4. The Children of Men by PD James

7. "He saw through the port the world below. Clouds, and the ocean, the globe itself. Here and there on it matches were lit; he saw the puffs, the flares. Fright overcame him, as he sailed silently through space, looking down at the pinches of burning scattered about: he knew what they were. It’s death, he thought. Death lighting up spots, burning up the world’s life, second by second. He continued to watch."

   1. The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

   2. Dr Bloodmoney by Philip K Dick

   3. Ringworld by Larry Niven

   4. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

8. “The Vial of Insanity has been poured into the brains of the wicked, and the City of Sin has been set afire by the cleansing torch of Yee-<i>ho</i>-vah!” the plump lady cried ... “Now you see the unrepentant flee, yea, verily, even as maggots flee the burst belly of –”

   1. Cell by Stephen King

   2. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

   3. Revelations

   4. The Book of Dave by Will Self

Solutions

1:B, 2:C, 3:A, 4:D, 5:C, 6:C, 7:B, 8:A

Scores

1. 2 and above.

   Awful. This website is more depressed by your answers than the books quoted

2. 4 and above.

   You've read a couple of end-of-the-world stories, true, but you generally ask if there's a happy ending before you buy a book. Don't you?

3. 6 and above.

   Not bad. Presumably you've been too busy sealing your bunker to read that much

4. 8 and above.

   Disturbingly good. You enjoy this stuff, don't you?